


Skin to skin, with you, at dawn

by solarfemm



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Captain America Steve Rogers, Captain America Steve Rogers/Modern Bucky Barnes, M/M, SHIELD Agent Bucky Barnes, do not copy to another site, i don't know what the timeline is for this and neither should you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-22
Updated: 2019-11-22
Packaged: 2021-02-18 01:27:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,615
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21519649
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/solarfemm/pseuds/solarfemm
Summary: Steve needs a hug. Bucky is a professional cuddler.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 50
Kudos: 446
Collections: Marvel Trumps Hate 2019





	Skin to skin, with you, at dawn

**Author's Note:**

  * For [britbrit99](https://archiveofourown.org/users/britbrit99/gifts).



> this is my Marvel Trumps Hate fill for britbrit99! I had a lot of fun writing it, but the credit for the idea invariably goes to hilarityplease
> 
> this one was tricky for me bcos i tried many different scenarios where bucky was steve's assigned therapist or steve was paying bucky to be his cuddler which didn't work as that's hella unethical, and i finally landed on this one. i hope it works out well for everyone else, bcos i'm actually happy with it. 
> 
> title from epigrams by poseidippos
> 
> [here is the cuddle sutra](https://uonlgbt.weebly.com/uploads/1/2/3/1/12319249/35078612-the-cuddle-sutra.pdf)!

The day Steve meets Bucky Barnes is one of the weirdest of his life. He’s just finished fending off a horde of rampaging rhino-aliens from outer space, he’s covered in rhino-alien goo, and when he walks into Natasha’s office in SHIELD HQ to tell her he’s already resigned, he finds her huddled on the floor, wrapped in a blanket and the arms of a man Steve’s never seen before. Apparently she’s comfortable enough with him to be swaddled by him, so who is Steve to judge?

It takes him a second to notice them as the lights flicker on, and they both turn to him with twin laser-sharp looks, Natasha’s curls mostly obscuring the man’s face. Steve notices his arm though—gun-metal gray and curled carefully around Natasha’s waist. 

“Am I interrupting?” Just because he’s not judging doesn’t mean he wants to get in the middle of—whatever is happening in front of him. 

Natasha sniffs. “No, I’m just getting in some cuddle time. I didn’t know you were going to be here.” She’s still covered in rhino-alien goo as well, and tear tracks stain her face. The man opens his arms and she gracefully gets to her feet. Now he’s covered in rhino-alien goo.

Steve’s never seen Natasha cry and it’s so uncomfortable that he looks at the man instead. He’s wearing drop-crotch pants and a loose shirt. The thought of Steve being as casual as this man makes him yearn in a way that only poetry can describe.

“I just quit.”

Natasha perks up at that.

“Is Fury giving you too many bullshit assignments?”

“That and saving the world is a lot easier when I don’t have a filing cabinet full of paperwork to fill out.”

“You know we use computers now,” she says, with a wry twist to her mouth. “Oh right,” she says, as the man gets to his feet as well. “Steve, James Barnes. James, Steve.”

“Bucky,” he says, extending his hand. He has a firm grip and soft skin. His eyes are so blue they could be gray, and he’s so handsome that Steve feels weak. 

“Are you—together?” It’s a horribly invasive question that he regrets instantly. Why did he say that? Is Bucky so devastatingly handsome that Steve has lost all sure footing and is one well-aimed smirk in his direction away from ripping his clothes off right there? Steve’s not that desperate, is he? 

“No,” Bucky says, a laugh in his voice. “I’m a SHIELD agent. You’ve got—” He reaches forward to wipe rhino-alien goo off Steve’s cheekbone with his thumb and Steve’s aching heart tells him yes, he is that desperate. The metal is warm to the touch. “Bucky Barnes, professional cuddler.”

Steve takes a moment to digest this. Sure, he thinks, it’s been a day. SHIELD has one of almost every profession on the face of the earth on their staff, and some in space, so how is “professional cuddler” any different than chimpanzee wrangler or doula?

“You don’t say.”

Bucky holds Steve’s gaze with his soft, blue eyes, his lips pursed ever so slightly in a smile. He is, without a doubt, the most beautiful man Steve’s ever seen.

Nat smiles up at him, her cheeks redder, looking brighter already. “Let’s get some ice cream.”

~

“It’s a form of therapy,” Bucky explains, in between licks of his black raspberry and chocolate chip cone. “It’s a proven fact that humans need physical contact, and we’re more isolated than ever, you know? Some people use sex to fulfill that need, and sometimes it’s a simple as a hug. I’m a hugger—that’s what I do.”

Steve only realises he’s staring when his own cherry vanilla ice cream starts dripping down his fingers. 

“Do you go around to retirement homes and hospitals?” Sam asks. Sam also had a bad time with the rhino-aliens and he also deserves some ice cream. Out of the three of them, he looks like he could use a hug the least, but that’s mostly because he has his shit together the most. That doesn’t necessarily mean he has _all_ his shit together, and the fact that he constantly follows Steve into increasingly more dangerous situations is proof.

Steve’s heart bleeds all over him and he must seem like he needs a hug the most because Sam and Natasha are pressed up against his sides despite how they’re all sitting in the National Mall and have as much room to move as they want. Apparently, what they want is to lean against Steve. 

Maybe he does need a hug. Maybe he should get a hug from Bucky.

“Not anymore. I work for SHIELD exclusively now. I’m surprised we haven’t run into each other.”

Sam shrugs. “I’m new.”

“Bucky gives the best hugs,” Nat says, looking pointedly at Sam.

“You want a hug?” Bucky holds his arms out, and the three of them look at Sam until he relents.

“All right, man. You twisted my arm.”

Bucky knee-walks over from where he’s sitting in front of them to come around to Sam’s side and wrap him up in his big, beefy arms, and manages not to get ice cream everywhere. Steve is so jealous he could cry.

Sam returns the hug with a laugh, looking just as bright as Natasha, as though Bucky is magic and his hugs have the ability to pull anyone out of a funk. 

“Wow,” Sam says. “That really did make me feel better.”

“That’s why they pay me the big bucks,” Bucky says, with a wink. When he moves back to where he was before, he stretches out in the grass resting on his elbow as his other hand brings his ice cream up to his mouth. 

Steve is—transfixed, he would say. Staring like a fucking creep, others would say. He snaps his gaze away from where Bucky’s hair rests artfully on his shoulder and down to his own ice cream, which is more than half melted from the heat of the day. The sad reality of the rhino-alien goo in his underwear has somehow culminated in his inability to do anything, like speak or eat his ice-cream in a timely manner or _stop staring at Bucky_.

Steve wants a hug so badly, but Bucky doesn’t offer, and Steve’s not going to ask for fear of what that would look like and mean—that he would be giving up some of his power over himself by admitting, with his body, that he needs a hug. He’s survived the last three years out of the ice without much more than random bouts of athletic sex with mostly women and some men, but it’s come nowhere near close to what he had with Peggy.

Peggy, the love of his life. Peggy, who lived the rest of her life without Steve, and was happy. Peggy, who now forgets him in the middle of her sentence. 

Steve shakes himself out of that line of thought before it overcomes him. He glances back up at Bucky, who makes him forget, too.

~

Steve’s halfway through his third day of freedom, and—having discovered charcoals again—three days of a fugue state in which certain things no longer matter: time, eating, pissing and bathing. It’s only when his thirst pulls him out of his reverie that he realises he hasn’t seen anyone since having ice cream in the National Mall. 

It’s not unusual for him to disappear for days at a time without keeping in contact with anyone, but now he doesn’t have the excuse that he’ll see them eventually at work, and it’s more noticeable that he hasn’t seen them. 

Prone to disappearing as he is, he usually visits Sam at the VA on their days off, or goes with him and his nieces to the ice rink, or lets Sam take him shopping for civilian clothes. Steve hasn’t had to dress himself in anything more than sweatpants or a button up shirt in a long time, maybe ever, and Sam knows this, Sam understands, and Sam accommodates. Steve needs someone to save him from himself. Or many, many days of therapy.

Steve leaves his desk—by the window, in the sun, under a lamp that he can flick on when the sun eventually goes down—to pick up his phone where it’s charging on his kitchen bench. His intention is to text Sam or Nat to let them know he’s alive and hasn’t been crushed by the agony of having nothing to do, but he finds himself paused on a different number.

He doesn’t have that many numbers in his phone. Sam, Nat, Ayana from the bakery so he can text her his order before he comes in, Harry from down the hall because he had a run-in with some muggers and Steve wanted to make sure he was okay—and now Bucky. His thumb opens up a new message to Bucky without him giving it direct instruction, and then it types out a message that he does _not_ give it permission to type.

 _I need a hug_ , the message reads. He stares at it for a long time, so long that he can’t blame it on an impulse or his fingers betraying him when he hits send. That’s all on him. 

He has a few moments of panic that are scarier than anything else he’s faced in this century, rhino-aliens included, before he throws his phone down on the bench and goes back to his desk. 

With Peggy it was simple: he liked her, she liked him, they were in love. They fucked in every room they could when they had more than three minutes to themselves, and they fought together fearlessly. They made a good team. Steve’s not sure if he has anything anyone wants aside from the mantle of Captain America and a body that isn’t his and never was, not really. He can corral a press room full of sharp-toothed reporters, can sell holy water to a priest, but Steve Rogers can’t get someone to like him any more than anyone else can. He just has to hope that he is enough.

He’s ten more minutes into his drawing and smudging charcoal everywhere like an oaf when his phone dings and he—calmly, like a normal person with a normal heart beat—retrieves his phone. 

_I can definitely provide. Want to meet somewhere now?_

Steve is not a normal person with a normal heart beat. He was born sick, how’s that song go? Command me to be well. His heart never beat normally until 1943, and it still didn’t beat normally because it never rose above 50. Maybe this is normal, this thudthud, thudthud of clanging bells in his chest. 

_You can come over to mine, if you like?_

He’s learned all about texting etiquette from Natasha and not from Sam, who apparently “texts like a child”, and he’s learned to phrase things things that could be questions as statements or sentences but with a question mark on the end. He doesn’t know why that works, but it does. 

It must work again, because Bucky texts back immediately. He even puts a little smiley emoji with its tongue out in the text.

_Sure. What’s your address?_

~

Steve’s heart beat continues to escalate well into Bucky’s visit to his apartment, and as he’s sitting on the bed while Bucky makes himself comfortable, he’s sure it’s going to give him away. Bucky is going to know how much of a loser and creep Steve is for luring him under false pretences, and then he’s going to punch Steve in the face, leave, and never speak to him again. 

But he doesn’t. He lies back on the bed, looks over at Steve, and says, “Whenever you’re ready.”

Steve flipped through the _Cuddle Sutra_ and picked out the position he thought he could deal with best. Bucky’s lying flat on his back and Steve rests his head on Bucky’s stomach, his body stiff for several minutes until Bucky’s hand comes up to his hair, and Steve relaxes.

When he closes his eyes, Steve can feel the expansion of Bucky’s belly with every breath. He can feel the warmth of Bucky’s body and his robotic arm. He can feel the tension leave his own body and his heart rate slow. 

It’s a fucking good cuddle. Steve feels warm and safe. He feels—as stupid as he knows this is—loved.

Bucky really is magic.

Steve doesn’t mean for it to happen, but when Bucky starts stroking his hands across Steve’s body—his arm, his neck, across his back—he feels the pressure of tears build up behind his eyes. He doesn’t cry very often—sometimes over his ma, sometimes over Peggy, but never over being this lonely. He’s taken the stalwart route of bearing his own cynicism and pain, balling it up, putting it into the little hole inside himself that never sees the light of day, and pretending it doesn’t exist. 

But that’s not working for him right now. He has no defences for willingly bearing his bleeding heart, even to someone who’s not going to judge him for it, and when he starts to cry, tears spilling over and running tracks down his face, his shoulders shaking, Bucky just holds him. 

“It’s okay, Steve,” Bucky says, in a voice that makes Steve believe it, “you’re okay.”

Steve cries for a long time. He cries until Bucky’s shirt is a wet rag under his face, and all the while Bucky makes soothing sounds and touches Steve’s face in a way he’s needed but never known how to ask for. It’s a cathartic kind of cry that leaves him rung out like a dishcloth when he’s done. 

He refrains from using Bucky’s shirt as a handkerchief and instead sits up to wipe his nose on his own shoulder. He glances towards the clock on his bedside table: they’ve been cuddling for almost forty minutes, and Steve’s been crying for most of that.

He looks down at Bucky, who is gazing up at him with such tenderness that Steve has to look away. He can’t barf his heart up twice in the span of thirty minutes, try as his heart might. He’s done.

“Feeling better?” Bucky is still touching him, rubbing a palm across Steve’s forearm. This must just be par for the course then, if he’s not phased in the slightest.

“Yeah. I think so.” Steve gives a big sniff, not unlike Natasha when he first met Bucky. “People must do this a lot, huh?”

Bucky shrugs. “Some people. SHIELD agents do, a lot of the time. They have a lot to get off their chests. It can be a lonely and traumatic job.”

Steve nods, watching Bucky’s hand.

“Do you want to keep cuddling?”

“How long do you do this for? Each session, I mean.”

“An hour.”

Steve glances at the clock again. 

“I’ve taken up enough of your time.”

A line appears between Bucky’s eyebrows as he frowns a little, and Steve feels like shit for making him frown like that. “Hey, no. Don’t think that.”

“I’ll pay you for an hour, don’t worry.”

Bucky sits up and takes Steve’s hand. He gives affection so freely that Steve might actually believe it’s real, if he let himself. 

“Steve,” Bucky says, carefully, “I didn’t ask for payment. You were a SHIELD agent, and you’re Natasha’s friend. Don’t give it a second thought.”

“Oh,” Steve says. “You don’t mind?”

“It’s not every day you get to cuddle Steve Rogers. It’s an honor to me.”

Steve bites back on saying something as stupid as, “It can be every day if you want,” because he wants Bucky to like him and not make him uncomfortable. Instead he smiles and lies down next to Bucky, who continues to touch Steve’s arm, stroking the backs of his knuckles over Steve’s skin. 

“Is this okay?”

“Yeah,” Steve says. It’s perfect.

~

He’s halfway through his mushroom linguine, at a Michelin star restaurant he’s never heard of, sitting across from a woman in a flattering dress, but all he can think of is Bucky. Nicola works in trauma rehabilitation. The head chef came out to present them with an expensive bottle of wine. There might be other stuff in the linguine. Bucky’s hands are so soft.

Steve can’t keep his head in the game, and it becomes a problem when Nicola stops talking and asks, “You must get a lot of that, working for SHIELD.”

“Head injuries? Not personally.”

Nicola smiles. She really is beautiful. She has a smattering of freckles across her nose and her eyes are a rich brown. Steve is lucky to be on a date with her. “I meant people needing rehabilitation.”

“Oh.” Steve glances down at his linguine, which is wilting more by the second. “I suppose. Yeah—yes. People need rehabilitation for lots of reasons, right?”

Nicola nods, but seems to lose interest in the conversation and reaches for her glass of wine.

“Have you heard of,” Steve starts. He realises how stupid it sounds, but continues, “Cuddle therapists?”

“Well, they’re not real therapists,” she says, which sets Steve on edge before she continues, “but they do good work. People need touch more than we’d like to admit, and it’s becoming increasingly harder now we live in such an isolated society. People don’t know how to connect. We can do it through apps, websites, work—but it’s hard to find real, genuine connection, and I think what gets left by the wayside is how much we need human touch just to get through our day.”

Steve never thought of himself as isolated, but when he looks back at his behaviour patterns over the last few years, it makes sense. “I don’t know. I think it was always hard to connect with people. The difference now is that the people we do connect with can be from anywhere. Used to be that you’d marry a girl who lived down the block from you, and that was your lot in life.”

“Not for you, then?”

Steve shakes his head. “No one looked at me twice.” No one before Peggy. “And then, well. It’s kind of hard to date when you’re fighting a war.”

“Well, you’re not fighting a war anymore, Captain.”

“No,” Steve muses. 

Nicola smiles at him through her eyelashes. He takes her home, touches her, lets her touch him. He lies awake after she’s gone, dress zipped back up, purse in hand, Lyft downstairs. It’s dark in his room with the curtains closed, and when he turns his head on the pillow he smells the faintest trace of oil from Bucky’s hair. He buries his nose in it while tracing the parts of his arm where Bucky touched—anything to replicate even a shadow of what Bucky did.

~

“All I’m saying is,” Sam says, around a mouthful of everything bagel, “if you’re not happy in this city anymore, there’s plenty of other places to go.”

“Like where?” Steve is on his fourth bagel, which tastes better than the linguine even if he does spill crumbs and seeds all over his kitchen counter. Usually he doesn’t eat this much in front of company—because he doesn’t want to gross anyone out—but Sam’s seen Steve in much worse situations than face deep in bread. 

“You’ve been to the Grand Canyon, right?”

He gives Sam a look that conveys how moot that question is. 

“Alright, alright. Mount Rushmore? Hollywood? The Grassy Knoll? MLK Jr’s National Site? There are so many places, man.”

“Maybe.” Steve sighs. He looks down at the cream cheese slopped all over his counter. 

The smile slips out of Sam’s voice. “Where do you want to go?” 

Sam is so kind and emotionally generous that Steve feels bad he’s getting his Steve-ness all over him. Sure, Sam’s been invaluable as a friend and ally, but maybe Steve would be a better friend if he had more direction in life.

“I want to say ‘home’ but I don’t think Brooklyn would be the same to me after all these years.”

Sam mulls that over. “You can make a home anywhere, you know. All you need is the right people.”

Steve nods. When he glances up, Sam’s looking resolute.

“I’d follow you anywhere. You don’t even have to ask.”

Steve lets his shoulders relax and reaches out for Sam’s hand. Sam takes his, and Steve feels a little of the magic there in that touch.

~

It’s 7:45 on a Saturday morning when Steve gets a new text. Usually it’s Natasha’s hilarious jokes or Sam updating him on Fury’s latest assignment, but sometimes, if he’s lucky, he’ll get a text from Verizon about updating his plan to Start Unlimited, with an Amazon Prime bundle thrown in.

Today, though, he gets a text from Bucky.

_Do you like puppies?_

He’s four episodes into _The A-Team_ when he gets the message, and he would never admit to anyone that he now streams tv shows for hours on end because he has nothing better to do, except maybe go outside or read a book, neither of which he will do right now, or maybe not ever. He can get food delivered to his house. He can facetime Natasha when she gets angry that she hasn’t seen his face in two weeks. He’s grown a beard now. He can do whatever he wants.

_Only the kind that don’t chew my shoelaces._

He only waits a minute for the reply, which is a video of someone’s lap with three Dalmatian puppies squirming around, mewling and snuffling. As much as everyone who knows him now would beg to differ, Steve’s never been immune to cute things. He rescued a litter of kittens from a snowstorm in Amsterdam, mostly to save the little things, but also as a morale booster for his company. They had them for two weeks while the snowstorm raged on, and ended up giving one of them to a teenage girl whose parents had been shot by Hydra. She’d only been spared by hiding in a wine cellar. Steve couldn’t bring her parents back, but he could give her a kitten.

Bucky tilts the camera up to show his own face to show the most rapturous smile, and Steve feels that weakness in his body again. 

_If you want to pet some puppies, you should come to the place I’m house sitting at._

Steve thinks about this for all of the two seconds it takes to write his message before it’s sent. 

_What’s the address?_

~

Turns out Bucky is house sitting in Rose haven, so Steve takes his bike and ends up at the coast 40 minutes later, his hair ruffled and face wind-blown because he never wears a helmet. Bucky doesn’t seem to care that Steve no doubt looks ridiculous and maybe like he hasn’t washed his hair in a few days or that he has bugs in his teeth. He greets Steve with a hug at the front door and Steve tries not to lean too much into it, because he can behave like a civil human being who isn’t utterly dependent on other people for comfort. He can comfort himself, damn it.

When Bucky pulls back, it’s only far enough that he’s still in Steve’s arms, and looks at him with that amazing smile, as if he’s genuinely happy to see Steve.

“Hey,” Bucky says.

Steve swallows, trying to look in Bucky’s eyes and not at his lips. “Hi,” Steve says, before Bucky pulls away.

He doesn’t go far—he just steps towards the house with a nod. “Come on in. The puppies are waiting for you.”

Steve follows Bucky inside and is immediately ambushed by a full-grown Dalmatian, who barks his head off at Steve’s intrusion, until Bucky quietens him down.

“This is Jackson. He’s just looking out for his girls.”

Jackson looks between Bucky and Steve before he butts at Bucky’s hand and follows them into the living room, where there is another full-grown Dalmatian sitting in a pile of puppies.

“This is Phoenix.” Bucky leans down to pet the mother’s head. “And these are Sula, Amber, and Delta.”

Steve crouches down next to Bucky and lets Phoenix sniff him. When she finds him suitable, she licks his hand. Bucky picks up one of the pups and hands her to Steve, who takes her gingerly.

“My friends have already given three away, and the rest are taken, unfortunately.” Bucky picks up another puppy and hugs her close to his body.

“So you get to have the benefits of playing with puppies, without the hassle of looking after them for ten years?” Steve doesn’t really know what to do with puppies—he never had a dog growing up, and it seemed impractical to get one since he came back, when he didn’t know if he would be in the country to feed it—so he sits on his haunches and watches Bucky. 

Bucky scowls. “That’s so heartless. I would love them forever and ever.” He holds the puppy up to his face and nuzzles her with his nose. 

Steve glances down at his own puppy, who’s looking up at him with doleful eyes, and Steve’s heart just about breaks. “Come here,” he says, pulling the puppy up to his shoulder, where she burrows into his neck with a soft mewl. 

“Dude, you’re a natural,” Bucky says, and then: “You know, I’m sure if _Captain America_ asked for a puppy—” and Steve bursts out laughing. 

“Too much for me to handle, pal.” The puppy gives a big yawn against his neck and promptly falls asleep. Steve wouldn’t rouse her for a gun to his head.

Bucky pulls his own puppy to his chest and picks up the other one, holding both of them close and laughing as they wriggle in his arms and yap. When he looks at Steve again with that bright and rapturous smile, Steve feels an unnameable feeling that echoes its way into his bones.

~

He ends up staying for a few hours to keep Bucky company. Steve learns that: Bucky doesn’t like to be on his own that much, even though he has five dogs there with him; Bucky used to be a physical therapist before he became a professional cuddler; and Bucky’s favourite colour is green. Steve hoards these facts like gold and keeps them buried in his chest for later.

In turn, Steve tells Bucky about how he’s spending his days now. Bucky doesn’t ask about the war, going into the ice, or coming out of it, and Steve is grateful to not have to rehash the most traumatic experiences of his life. 

And they’re also playing with puppies.

Steve’s stomach starts to rumble around midday and he makes his excuses to leave. Bucky doesn’t push him to stay any longer, although Steve kind of wishes he would. They put the puppies in their bed and Bucky follows Steve to the front door. Steve _um_ s and _ah_ s for a while, making stupid small talk about wanting to take a trip soon just for something to do, while Bucky pulls his hair back in a ponytail.

“Is that what you want to do?” Bucky asks.

“Hm?” Steve’s staring again. Bucky is so beautiful, especially when the sun shines directly on him, turning his eyes the lightest shade of blue. 

“I said—nevermind. I’m coming back to the city in a couple days, so do you want to catch up then?”

“Yeah, of course,” Steve says.

Bucky smiles again, like he has all day. Steve made Bucky smile. He’ll never get over it.

“Okay, good.” Bucky steps forward, his hair tied back, his feet bare, his skin smelling like mango soap, and kisses Steve on the cheek. It seems to happen in slow motion, because Steve watches him move for a long time, but the press of Bucky’s lips is torturously swift. 

“Ah,” Steve says.

Bucky widens his eyes. “Oh shit, sorry. Didn’t know you were going to react like that. My bad. Uh, you can just continue on with your day.”

He scrambles to leave, stepping backward onto the front stoop to get as much distance between them as he can, but before he leaves Steve grabs for his hand.

“No, I—I liked that.”

The color returns to Bucky’s face, quick as that. He squeezes Steve’s hand, and Steve melts before he pulls away. 

“Good. I didn’t want to make Captain America hate me. Also, good litmus test for whether you’re a homophobe.”

Steve bursts out laughing again. “Homophobe? Buck, I’m bisexual. That’s a word people use, right? Bisexual?”

Bucky’s eyes crinkle up in a smile that doesn’t reach his lips. “I had a feeling. You didn’t want to tell anyone?”

Steve shrugs. “I guess it never came up.” Though he should celebrate his first coming out in the 21st Century, Steve is still buoyed by the kiss Bucky planted on his cheek. 

“We should talk about that sometime.”

Steve ducks his head and turns. When he’s sitting on his bike, he waits for Bucky to go back into the house after they say their goodbyes. Only, he doesn’t, and Steve can’t bear to pull away from him while he’s still standing there.

“Goodbye, again,” Bucky says, fond and exasperated. 

“I can’t leave until you do,” Steve says, finding the words easier to say than he would around anyone else. He’s never been as open with anyone, except maybe Sam, as he has around Bucky. Natasha is wrapped up in fourteen layers of espionage and it’s hard to see past that some days. It was almost like that with Peggy, but they barely got any time for themselves. It’s hard to be vulnerable with someone who’s gone most of the time, but it’s easy to be open with Bucky, who endured half an hour of Steve sobbing on him.

“Oh,” Bucky says. “I was going to watch you leave.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. “You first, though.”

“Is it a case of, ‘hate to see you leave, but love to watch you go’?” 

“What?”

“Nothing.” Bucky shakes his head and several strands of his ponytail fall out and into his face. Steve wants to brush them back so badly it hurts. He wants to feel the texture of them between his fingers and in his mouth. He wants.

“Okay, fine.” Bucky says. He throws Steve one last wave and turns back to the house, disappearing as quickly as a SHIELD agent would. Steve _is_ really sad to see him go, but it means it’s easier for him to get on his way. 

He doesn’t turn around and go right back and kiss Bucky until they don’t know their own names, but only just. 

~

When he gets back to his apartment, he finds Natasha on his couch eating cereal in his sweatpants. She’s got her hair pulled back in a loose braid and she’s watching Steve’s tv. He didn’t even know he had service on that thing, since he’s never used it.

“Hi honey,” he says, tossing his keys and wallet in the ceramic bowl by the door with a relieving clink, “I’m home.”

“How was your day?” Natasha says without looking away from the tv.

“Oh, you know. Grind it ‘til you own it,” he says, mostly to see if she’ll react.

Her gaze doesn’t falter from the tv. “There’s something happening in London.”

Steve frowns and moves closer so he can see the tv. “That’s a spaceship,” he says. The news shows a spaceship taller than the London Eye come crashing into the shore of Greenwich.

“Uh huh.”

“What’s a spaceship doing in London?”

“No idea.”

Steve sighs. “Okay, call Stark to get the quinjet ready.”

“No need,” Natasha says, pointing with her spoon. “Thor’s on it.”

Just as she says it, Thor comes rushing into the frame, spinning his hammer, as people flee the scene. Steve feels a lot better now. “I wondered what he’d been up to since New York.”

“Living his best life, apparently.”

Steve takes a seat on the couch next to her and they continue to watch the news in silence punctuated by the reporter’s speech and Natasha crunching her Lucky Charms. After she finishes her cereal, draining the bowl and putting it on the coffee table with all of Steve’s other dirty cereal bowls, she leans into Steve’s side, her head leaned against his shoulder until he puts his arm around her and she settles into him. They stay like that for a while as the battle of London rages on.

~

Peggy is forgetting more and more these days. She asks where Daniel is and gets panicked when he isn’t there. Steve can’t bear any more visits of telling her that her husband is dead, so he stops telling her. It gets harder and harder to visit her the older they both get. Steve wonders if this will happen to him, or if the serum will keep his mind sharp, able, impervious to damage. He knows the serum will keep him alive long after everyone else is gone. He knows the only one who will be with him as he watches all his friends die is Thor, and even Thor will die, eventually. Unless someone kills him, or he kills himself, or climate catastrophe kills them all, he will outlive even Thor. 

Peggy isn’t long for this world. Unlike Steve, she will go peacefully in the night, blissfully unaware of her fate and the fates of the people she’s touched. Steve envies that. He doesn’t want to die, but knowing he can’t is a fate worse than death.

~

He feels like he’s coming loose at the edges. Bucky’s in his bed again, after Steve asked him over, because apparently when Captain America calls Bucky drops everything. It’s been a week since they last saw each other, and Steve’s been itching to text or call or just have evidence that Bucky is existing with him on the same planet at the same time.

“Are you okay?” Bucky’s sitting on Steve’s mattress cross-legged while Steve has yet to bridge the gap between the door and the bed. 

“Sure. Um, I want to try a different pose.”

“Whatever you want to do, Steve.” 

Bucky says it like he would do anything for Steve, like it really is up to him, and Steve’s heart hurts to think this is anything other than what it is. He’s used to people following his orders, sure, but Bucky isn’t one of his soldiers. It feels weird to boss him around, so he doesn’t.

“Can we try the 68 ½?”

“Of course.”

Bucky turns on his side and Steve lies down next to him to rest his head on Bucky’s thigh while Bucky does the same to Steve’s. 

It occurs to Steve while they’re lying there, heads pillowed on each other’s thighs, that Steve hasn’t been this intimate with a man—ever. His hook ups don’t usually stay longer than it takes to fuck, or else he shows them the door when they start asking too many personal questions, and it wasn’t much different back in the ‘30s and ‘40s either. He’d go cruising in Prospect Park sometimes—before the war, when he was younger than he likes to think about—and during the war he was with Peggy. 

He’s trying not to think about her now. What he had with her can’t be replicated with anyone else. And not with Bucky, who is doing his job. 

But—what did Bucky call it? An ‘honor’? He’s not asking Steve to pay him. He wants to do this, with Steve.

Bucky’s thigh is warm against his temple, his yoga pants soft and clean. His hands are placed in the rectangle between their bodies, close enough for Steve to touch.

So he does.

He takes Bucky’s hands in his own and rubs his thumbs across his tender knuckles. Bucky sucks in a breath that is piercing and delightful, and Steve makes himself look at Bucky, look in his eyes, as he brings one hand up to his mouth and presses his lips to where his thumb rubbed.

Bucky’s eyes widen slightly in surprise, as if it’s a surprise that Steve could want him, as if anyone couldn’t. 

Steve’s never been that good with his words when it comes to things like this. He’s been learning about love languages, and he thinks his primary languages are physical touch and acts of service. He would hazard a guess that Bucky’s include physical touch as well.

He kisses the knuckles of one hand before he moves onto the other, then brings them up to press them against his cheeks. Bucky’s hand is warm and soft, and makes Steve think of the kittens he rescued from the snowstorm. They needed a place to be safe, and Steve kept them warm, dry and fed. Steve will protect Bucky everyday if he needs to—from snowstorms, aliens, anything. 

When he looks at Bucky again, it’s with as much tenderness as he can muster, and Bucky is doing the same thing. 

“God, Steve,” he says, sounding out of breath.

“I can’t stop thinking about you,” Steve says. It seems impossible that they met only a few weeks ago, and yet Steve could fall this hard. He feels like he’s known Bucky his whole life. “Can I kiss you?”

Bucky nods and sits up, Steve sits up too, and they meet wordlessly, their lips pressed together as Bucky clings onto Steve’s shoulders and Steve slides his hand into Bucky’s hair. 

Kissing Bucky, Steve feels like he did when he came out of the Vita-Ray Chamber—renewed, and like he can breathe again. He feels saved. 

He can feel Bucky smiling into the kiss and echoes it, trying to kiss him until he can’t anymore.

“Stop smiling,” Bucky says, laughter in his voice, “I’m trying to kiss you.”

“You started it.” Steve can’t keep himself in check and presses his smile to Bucky’s cheeks, nose, forehead, eyes, anywhere he can while Bucky scrunches his face up. “Stop, I’m trying to kiss you.”

Bucky laughs and tackles Steve onto the bed, which starts a round of roughhousing mixed with kissing where Bucky gives as good as he gets. Steve stops when Bucky goes limp, breathless and pink beneath him, Steve sitting on his stomach. 

“Oof, you’re heavy,” Bucky says, and Steve laughs, says “sorry” as he rolls off, but Bucky follows him over and kisses him again, kissing and kissing until Steve’s breathless too.

~

The past few weeks have been the happiest of Steve’s life. There’s no World War, no Depression, no keeping himself away from reality. Bucky’s been taking Steve to his favourite cafes, parks, beaches, pulling him out of his head and into the world, where he can be a person and not just a symbol. 

He waits until it’s been about three months of them dating until he takes him to see Peggy. It’s only fitting that she give her blessing to the only other person he’s cared this much about.

Peggy smiles up at Bucky as Steve arranges the bunch of flowers on her nightstand. She has Bucky’s hand in her own and glances between them. “I haven’t seen him this happy since before,” she says, her voice wistful and croaky. “He always treated me well. You’re in good hands.”

Bucky glances back at Steve. “I know,” he says, and his expression is so tender and soft Steve can’t stand it. He looks between them, his past, his future, the both of them filling out his present, ready to pass his days in a heaven of his own making.


End file.
